Peter Macinnis is a science communicator and writer who works for various publishers, mainly Pier 9 and the National library of Australia, as well as occasionally contributing to ABC radio and ABC online.

I am a science writer/science communicator: I chase all of the sweet
science that is happening and write it up for books, both for children (in the past through Puffin/Penguin and Allen and Unwinn, more recently the National Library of Australia and Pier 9) and for a more general
and adult audience through Allen and Unwin, though Pier 9 is now
my main publisher. I also do radio talks,
especially Ockham's Razor on ABC, and I have done essays
for The Slab, the ABC's online science site. I also tend to be asked to do short and pithy articles for educational
journals, because I am a bit of a pot-stirrer.

I trained as a botanist, but I have to be as at home with quantum
computing, the fine structure constant. 19th century dentures or Martian
plate tectonics as I am with the inner workings of a bryophyte. That
mainly requires a good general background knowledge of the sciences, and
the ability to get to grips with the intricacies -- or to know somebody
who can clarify it. I tend to use one particular e-mail list as a
sounding board-cum-question place -- though most of the questions are
asked by others.

I think I have always assumed I would be a writer of some sort,
but originally, I planned to write technically precise science fiction
-- but I was born too late for that. So I turned to explaining science.
It is worth noting that my slow academic start was related to my
connection over several years with 'honi soit'.

It found me, really. I was dabbling a bit, but I was planning a rather
different sort of school text, based on the actual work of scientists,
described so that the experiments they did could be repeated or at least
analysed, and I found a bit of fraud that is on the Web (see
Fraudo the Frog?) -- two chemists
had faked their data, it seemed. I phoned Robyn Williams, expecting him to
interview me, but he asked me to write it -- and if the length was right,
he would use it on "Ockham's Razor", otherwise on the "Science Show". That was about 1985, and the planned
book came out in a different form in 2009.

Moral: NEVER throw out those old files!

Now back in 1985, a few people were communicating about science,
but it wasn't a career, so I was an education bureaucrat, but I decided
to join the Powerhouse Museum which was about to open, because I was
groping my way to doing something about the public understanding of
science, as it used to be called.

What education and training do you have for your job and how long has it taken?

Ah, yes, education. Well, for starters, who said it was finalised?
I completed ten first-year courses before I graduated, and took seven
years to get there -- I did lots of reading during that time, and I used
to read "New Scientist" and "Scientific American" -- they used to take
months to arrive then, and I read lots of books, but that was for fun
and information.

These days, the main skills are in searching online, both original
source and also in online books and journals, then tracking down the
original books themselves. I still use Fisher Library on a regular basis.

I'm not at all sure I have the qualifications even now -- it is
partly a matter of getting the material, partly a matter of acting like
a journalist to find an interesting slant.

What's a typical day? I often say that if I went to school now, I would be
diagnosed as ADHD -- I spent a number of years as a teacher, and I have
tried to be the sort of teacher to kids like me that some of my better
teachers were to me. I need to have five things going on at once, so when
I get bored, I switch. Today, I have been researching the
next book, planning publicity for a book due out in three weeks, and
preparing a presentation to give in Queensland at a writers' festival
next weekend. I also read last week's issue of 'Science', which I get
online.

On a good day, I might generate as much as 6000 words, though 2000
is more common. Of course, by the time I start, I will have put in
several months on research, and I will have a database which includes
first drafts of the tops and tails of each chapter and sub-chapter.

Probably getting an Eve Pownall Honour Book award from the
Children's Book Council of Australia. I had been persuaded by a
publisher to tackle a history for younger readers of the Kokoda Track
campaign. I wrote it, it was crap, so I ditched it and started again.
It was a lot of hard work (and my editor, Karen Tayleur put a lot of
work in as well), but it paid off.

Just as I refuse to admit to any more than advanced middle age, so
I refuse to admit to any single event called "the highlight" -- but in
the past, I have done several delightful fraud investigations that are
in the public domain (Dulong and Petit's Law, the high-power low-morals
marketing of the PLATO computer-based education system, which I blew out
of the water), and one other which is confidential. I enjoy nailing
crooks by analysing the data and showing that something does not
compute. I plan all my books in a spreadsheet, but I also know how to
catch frauds by pattern analysis.

Not having enough time to do all the books I want to do. In
particular, I have eight 'young adult' historical fiction books planned,
set in Australia in the period 1852-1865, all plotted and four drafted,
but they are on hold. There is a heavy emphasis on the science and the
technology of the era, and I need a great deal more research to manage
that well enough.

I have a list of about sixty books I would like to write, but I
hardly ever get to it, as titles seem to emerge and claim the high ground.

The "Renaissance Man" may no longer exist, but new renaissance
people can exist if knowledge and information can be packaged in such a
way that people may get wisdom and insight from it. I act as a sort of
leaven in the mix, I hope.